


I'm kinda over getting told to throw my hands up in the air

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 10:51:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2022393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the letter comes addressed to "Alayne Arryn," Sansa cannot help but laugh. Her secret has been known to so many in the Vale for so long now that she had almost forgotten that, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, Sansa Stark was as dead as her brothers and sister.</p><p>She shows the letter to Arya, who laughs, and then she seeks out Randa so preparations might begin for their journey to the capital. After all, if Rickon can rise from the dead and take Winterfell, if Bran can return from death and worse-than-death to rebuild half the realm, why should she and Arya not walk once more in the world as well?</p><p>She does not say those words aloud - she and Arya know well enough what true horrors there are in store for those who rise from death, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm kinda over getting told to throw my hands up in the air

When the letter comes addressed to "Alayne Arryn," Sansa cannot help but laugh. Her secret has been known to so many in the Vale for so long now that she had almost forgotten that, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, Sansa Stark was as dead as her brothers and sister.

She shows the letter to Arya, who laughs, and then she seeks out Randa so preparations might begin for their journey to the capital. After all, if Rickon can rise from the dead and take Winterfell, if Bran can return from death and worse-than-death to rebuild half the realm, why should she and Arya not walk once more in the world as well?

She does not say those words aloud - she and Arya know well enough what true horrors there are in store for those who rise from death, after all, and it will do neither of them any good to bring such things into this safe place. She turns her attention back to the letter instead, to read it once more, to look for hidden meaning.

 _Alayne Arryn,_ _Lady Regent of the Eyrie and the Vale,_ the letter reads, and Sansa reaches over to stroke Jasper's thick, fair hair - there is nothing of her in her son, but she thinks he has Bran's smile. He is the very image of his father, though, the little Lord of the Eyrie, and something in Sansa sinks at the thought of Harry, as last she had seen him. He had seemed peaceful in death, which had felt wrong to her - a man so lively, so  _alive,_ should have looked wrong in death. 

He had been so very sweet, her Harry. She had not loved him, but she thinks that had they had more time, more than just seven scant months as man and wife, she thinks that she might have been able to.

Sansa does not love easily, now. She had before, of course, but her time as Alayne shifted something inside her, and she keeps herself better guarded now. There is Jasper, and there is Arya, and there are Bran and Rickon. There might have been Harry, too, had it not been for Petyr, but there is nothing to be done about that. They are both dead, Harry sorely missed and Petyr gladly seen off.

The letter is from the Queen, not the King, which surprises Sansa. She had been given to believe that King Aegon took care of most of the business of ruling, and that Queen Shireen dealt with the restoration of the realm (and with its breaking, too, for it had been Shireen Baratheon who had bartered terms with Lord Manderly, serving as Rickon's regent, and Shireen Baratheon who had seen peace made with Dorne and the Iron Isles, too, the latter reportedly the easier endeavour because of a queer sort of kinship between the two Queens). Shireen Baratheon writes with a firm, strong hand, and deals as little in pleasantries as Lady Anya.

Sansa thinks that, if this letter is any indication of the Queen's character, she might like the younger woman enormously.

"Are you quite certain?" Arya asks, bouncing Jasper on her knee and pretending to bite his nose, laughing at his squeals of delight. "Do you not think it might be difficult to return to court?"

"A court held now on Dragonstone," Sansa points out. "King's Landing is no more, little sister, and the Lannisters gone with it. I will have no great difficulty in attending, and besides - how am I to turn down a personal invitation from the Queen?"

"I will accompany you," Arya says, as though it might have been in doubt. "And Lady Anya, and Bronze Yohn. And bring Myranda, as well, she may be useful."

Arya and Randa dislike one another, Randa jealous that she had been supplanted so quickly as Sansa's primary confidante upon Arya's arrival, Arya simply distrusting Randa and questioning her loyalty to Sansa. They do see one another as useful, though, which allows for Sansa to keep them both close. She likes having them close - Randa teeters on the border of the small few Sansa loves, the affection constantly in flux, but she makes Sansa laugh and Jasper adores her, so even that uncertainty is not enough to make Sansa push her away.

"We shall have to see about a gown for you," Sansa says, instead of any of that. "At least one, so you might look the part when presented to the King and Queen."

 

* * *

 

Court, in Willas' estimation, is exceedingly boring.

All anyone seems to concern themselves with is sex - have the King and Queen consummated their marriage yet? Whose wife is the bastard-turned-lord of Storm's End fucking tonight? Did you  _see_ the neckline on the younger Lady Tarly's gown? Have you heard that Ser Whatshisname of Whocareswhere was overheard asking the Grand Maester for moon tea for a  _married_ lover? 

Willas has never had any great interest in sex - he has tried it, of course, with men and women and sometimes both at the same time, and it is pleasurable enough, a decent enough way to pass an evening in certain company, but aside from a few instances, it is not something he has ever sought out. Even those few times, it had been more academic interest than any true desire for the warmth of another's body. 

At court, he is an oddity. Elayne Tarly persists in pressing her ample bosom to his arm or his chest at every opportunity, and Nymeria Sand flirts shamelessly with him, he thinks, purely to annoy the other men, those who would give their right arm to have her leaning over the arms of their chairs in such a way as to emphasise her graceful figure. He has been approached by half the servants and stableboys on Dragonstone, young men who think to chance their luck with a lord who shows no interest in women, thinking Willas' tastes run as Loras' had, but he turns them all away as firmly and politely as he can manage. 

The arrival of the party from the Eyrie is exciting, though, if only because of the whispers that echo in Lady Arryn's every step -  _is that not the older Stark girl?_

As it turns out, it is indeed the older Stark girl, Lady Sansa, and Willas finds himself longing for Margaery's company, because his sister would find the elaborate ruse that kept Lady Sansa from detection for so long terribly amusing. Margaery is gone, though, consumed in the flames of King's Landing along with Loras and so many others, friends and enemies and strangers alike, so Willas turns his thoughts away.

He does not dwell long on Lady Sansa's emergence, pausing only to wonder if mayhap the dark girl with the striking grey eyes who is never far from Lady Sansa's side might be the missing  _younger_ Stark girl, and to spare a laugh at how absurd this all is, before returning to his work. He is on Dragonstone as Master of Laws, after all, and has enough to do without teasing out plots and mysteries that span near a decade, now.

He hates his title. He enjoys his work, yes, likes both Aegon and Shireen - her particularly as she becomes more confident and fights more with her husband, who often needs to be reminded that he generally knows Westeros least of everyone in any given room - and sometimes even enjoys the small council meetings, finds Lord Commander Duckfield perfectly charming and likes Nym, too, likes her enough to find her flirting amusing where he usually finds such a thing annoying. The rest are...

Unworthy of much notice is the closest he can come to offering a compliment.

Everyone is in a tizzy over the emergence of the sisters Stark - for he was right, it  _is_ Lady Arya that shadows Lady Sansa's every step - from hiding, though, and no work is getting done in the council chamber. Willas cannot help but be frustrated by that, which is why he takes to skipping council meetings, bringing his work to the little-used library, and settling there for whole afternoons, in blissful, undisturbed quiet.

 

* * *

 

After the solitude of the Eyrie, the tight crowding of Dragonstone overwhelms Sansa.

She cannot seek peace in her rooms, for now that everyone knows who she is (and damn whoever recognised her, for she wants nothing more than to return to the Eyrie, to raise Jasper and give him the happiness she and Arya and the boys lost) they bother her there constantly, suitors proclaiming to have come to love her from afar - and oh, doesn't her stomach turn at those words, for she remembers everything that happened in King's Landing and can see sweet, dead Margaery Tyrell speaking those words to Joffrey and seeming to mean them, all while planning to murder him.

She thinks Arya alone would be able to stop any of these fools from murdering her, or from doing anything else at all, which is a comfort, but the words still curdle in her belly and leave her longing for the distance of the Eyrie. She misses Jasper desperately, too, but had not dared risk her son here, in what is still a hell even without Lannisters to set the demons free.

"My lady," someone says as Sansa wanders through the library, and she puts the almost-familiar golden-brown eyes and heavy curls of rich brown hair together with the crutches leaning against the edge of the table, and her stomach twists, which is altogether different to a turn. "You seem lost in your thoughts."

"Lord Tyrell," she says, dipping a curtsy and smiling a little when she lifts her head. "I have heard so much."

"Doubtless half of it lies," he says, but his smile is half wicked as he rises slowly from his chair. "This is the stuffiest library I have ever sat in - would you care to take the air with me, my lady? I am told that there are lovely gardens here, and someone with less specific tastes might be a better judge than I."

Sansa has not made a new friend in a long time, but she thinks, by the time Lord Willas walks her back to her rooms, still laughing at the story of Jasper falling into the cask of flour and, covered from head to toe in flour, scaring Cook so badly that she had had to lie down a while, Sansa thinks she may have made a friend.

 

* * *

 

"You and Lady Arryn seem to be getting along well," the King says idly over a game of cyvasse, and Willas frowns.

"I do not need you to matchmake me," he says, rolling his eyes at Aegon's clear amusement. "But yes, we do - she is an intelligent woman. She speaks often and with great love of her son, and she tells remarkably filthy japes. She is a perfectly likeable lady, you cad."

"You have spoken more with her since her arrival than you have with anyone save my lady and myself since  _your_ arrival, fool," Aegon says, considering one of his elephants. "You are not a man for idle affairs, Willas, you have made that perfectly clear with your septon's lifestyle, so of course everyone is curious about your interest in Lady Arryn."

Willas rolls his eyes again, because  _of course_ it is being made about sex. He is an oddity for being over thirty and neither wed nor father to a bastard, he knows that, but he wishes all the same that he might speak to a woman - a woman still in widow's weeds, at that! - without it being assumed that he seeks to bed her.

He considers, for a moment, what it might be like to bed Sansa, and is stunned to find that the idea is more interesting than any such considerations have been previously. 

"We have much in common," is all he says. "She is a friend, Aegon. Just a friend."

But as he spends more time with Sansa Arryn, he wonders if mayhaps she could be more than that. They  _do_ have a great deal in common, and he  _does_ admire her, even if it is not in the same way his peers about court seem to. She fascinates him, in a quiet sort of way, because there is so much more to her than she allows anyone to see.

"Come to Highgarden," he says impulsively one day. "Not now, but someday. Bring Jasper with you - I already feel as if I know him, from your stories."

He asks her to come to Highgarden, but not to stay - he is still not sure that he ever wishes to wed, not even to curious Sansa, beautiful Sansa, and besides, she has a son to raise and the Vale to govern. 

 

* * *

 

Sansa returns to the Vale, fights back tears at how tall Jasper has grown when he runs to meet her, and settles back into her role as Lady of the Eyrie. 

"Tell me," Arya says from her perch on the windowsill of Sansa's solar, Jasper playing with his little wooden knights under her feet. "Did Tyrell ask you to marry him?"

Sansa flushes, although she does not know why, and shakes her head.

"He invited Jasper and I to visit," she says, and wonders at that. He had seemed as shy of her as she had felt of him, and she cannot help but think that mayhaps there was more to his invitation that he had wanted her to see.

"I think we might go," she hears herself saying, thinking of the warmth of Willas' arm against her own, sitting side by side in the gloomy library, and how he had never once tried to so much as pinch her bottom. She has never had a suitor who did not wish to bed her, and it is a relief to think that Willas might be the first.

Oh. Does she consider Willas a suitor? How odd that she did not realise it until just now.

**Author's Note:**

> Aaand one more to be continued *facepalm*
> 
> Written for SansaWillasWeek on tumblr.
> 
> Title from 'Team' by Lorde


End file.
